


let's try for take two

by melodiousbirdsandmadrigals



Series: supermom [1]
Category: Justice League (2017), The Flash - All Media Types, Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: A little angst but mostly fluff, Character Death Fix, Diana is supermom, Don't copy to another site, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Time Travel, barry and diana are bros, barry is a good friend
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-05
Updated: 2019-09-05
Packaged: 2020-10-10 17:35:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20531906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melodiousbirdsandmadrigals/pseuds/melodiousbirdsandmadrigals
Summary: The first time Barry makes Diana smile is, coincidentally, the first time he meets her. It's also the moment that he realizes that he would do just about anything to make Diana smile again.or: the one where Barry decides a little jaunt through space-time is worth it





	let's try for take two

**Author's Note:**

> no beta we die valiantly
> 
> i don't own the characters, just this version of the fix-it in my mind
> 
> i once saw something where barry called diana supermom and obviously now its my headcannon. kudos to all y'all whose headcannons came before.

The first time Barry makes Diana smile is, coincidentally, the first time he meets her. It's also the moment that he realizes that he would do just about _ anything _to make Diana smile again. 

There's something about her that's calming, that makes him feel safe in a way that he hasn't in a long time, and he lowkey craves that. (That and her approval. He definitely craves her approval.) 

And—she's so fucking _ supportive_. She can be a little bit of a hardass, especially to Bruce, but she can also be soft and encouraging and so uplifting. For example, the third time they train together, Barry manages a move that's been giving him trouble for weeks. 

“That was wonderful, Barry!” she says in her lilting accent, with such enthusiasm (and another of those brilliant smiles) that Barry feels like he's conquered the world. He's pretty sure it's just the confidence that her words give him that allows him to do it three more times before the session is over. 

And it's within the first week that he's known her that he realizes that it's because he kind of equates her with everything he remembers that a mom should be. 

(He ignores the fact that she looks, like, thirty at most, and focuses on her demeanor and the sad, ancient look in her eyes, and basically starts referring to her as supermom in his head.) 

Which is why he's so, so, _ so _ fucking angry when Bruce hits below the belt and makes a snide remark about her _ dead boyfriend_. 

Now, look. Barry doesn't know a whole lot about Diana’s personal life. He knows that she lives in Paris when she's not training with the JL, but that's pretty much it. Regardless, however, he can see the immediate effect that Bruce’s words have, and he highkey wants to punch Bruce because of it. (Her light expression drops and pain engulfs it for a second—so quickly that Bruce probably doesn't register it, but Barry does because time moves differently for him—before a stony mask comes up and she snaps into something cold and aloof.) 

He decides in that moment that he doesn't like Bruce. He'll work with him for the good of humanity, but he doesn't have to like or respect someone that could be so hurtful to such a kind, _ good _ person like Diana. 

(He knows Diana can take care of herself, and recognizes that she probably does, since the next day, Bruce looks thoroughly chastened and Diana looks as close to smug as he's ever seen her.) 

Anyways, it's the dead boyfriend comment that makes him hang around a little later one night after training, right after they manage to defeat Steppenwolfe. (He wants to make sure she's okay. And sure, he's a little nosy.) 

“Is there something you need, Barry?” she asks. 

“Uh,” he stumbles. “It's just been a long week. Wanna grab some coffee?”

“Doesn't your metabolism prevent caffeine from being effective?” she asks.

“Yeah,” Barry admits. “Doesn't mean I wouldn't mind the taste. Or, uh. Someone to talk to.” 

* * *

They do end up getting coffee. Diana orders an espresso, while Barry gets the sugariest latte he can manage. 

“Are you alright, Barry?” she asks softly, concerned and caring. For a second he wants to lean into the kindness and accept her care, because sometimes the world feels heavy, even with Iris and Joe and the JL. 

“I—it's the anniversary of my mother's death,” he says finally, because he needs to tell someone. “A big one. Fifteen years. So, uh. I may kind of have an idea for how you feel about, uh. About the thing Bruce said.” 

She gives a soft little _ hmm _of understanding, as if she finally realizes Barry's intent, and then reaches a hand out and covers his with her own. 

“You know, Barry, they say that time heals all wounds, but I'm not sure that's true. Sometimes I think time just buries them a bit.” 

He nods in agreement. “I keep hoping it will get better. Easier. But sometimes it just wells up and I can't breathe. And then, on the easier days, sometimes I feel guilty, like I'm forgetting.” 

“It's been nearly a hundred years, and I still have days like that,” says Diana sympathetically. 

It pulls him out of his mind for a moment. 

“One _ hundred _years?” 

A hint of a smile plays at Diana’s lips, like she was expecting this reaction. 

“I'm nearly three thousand years old, Barry.” 

“Whoa, you _ are _supermom,” he breathes, and she snorts a bit at that, raises her eyebrow. 

“Uh, sorry. But you totally are. Especially for me. My therapist would say I'm assigning roles because I need a mom figure. Like on days like today.”

“Well, then, in the spirit of being _ supermom _ let me say this: your mother will always be a part of you, even when the ache dulls and doesn't sit with you every moment of every day. We honor their memories by living.” 

“Sometimes that's so hard, though.”

“I know, Barry. I have lost a lot of people over the years, but some of them stick with me more than others. Steve was my entry into this world. We didn't know each other for very long, but I loved him. He showed me what humanity was capable of, why it was worth fighting for. It is a daily struggle, sometimes, to remember why the world of man is worth it.”

“I fight so that more innocents like my mom don't die.”

“Then you are making her proud.”

Their coffees are finished in relative silence, and Barry is burning to ask more, but doesn't know how to verbalize it. 

“Was he the love of your life?” he finally gets out as they're exiting the shoppe, about to head their separate ways. 

She pauses, and he thinks he's gone too far. 

“My people tell a story, that all persons were once two-headed and two-bodied, but the gods saw that they were too powerful, and so they split the bodies apart and sent them in separate directions. From then on humanity has always searched for their other half, their soulmate. 

“I don't know that I believe there's just one person for each of us. When I was a child on Themyscira, I was told that I was sculpted of clay and brought to life by Zeus. I suppose I thought myself excluded from the narrative, and in a way, I liked it: I would choose who makes me happy. 

“I am begotten by a God and an Amazon, but I'm still convinced that love is what you make of it and not discrete to one person. I have had many loves, but yes. He might be _ the _ love, the one the myths talk about when they reference souls being made of the same stuff.

“Or perhaps I'm just jaded and caught in _ what ifs, _because he was taken from me before I could tell him how I felt. Goodnight, Barry.” 

She's gone before he can reply, but it's only a moment later that a plan starts to form. 

* * *

Barry knows that he shouldn't mess with time. He _ knows_, okay? 

He knows why he can't go back and save his mother. He knows introducing people back into the timeline is tricky. He knows that one false step in a timeline that isn't your present (or even yours) can be disastrous. 

But he's also alight with possibilities, because if what Diana says is true, the Steve she referenced died a hundred years ago. No one but Diana would recognize him, it wouldn't change anyone's timelines in the same way it would change timelines by bringing Nora Allen back. 

And he wouldn't let anyone in his own time know that he was saving him, which meant that whatever effects Steve’s death had on Diana at the time would remain intact. 

So Barry makes a snap decision: he's going to find out who this Steve was, and he's going to rescue him. 

* * *

After their conversation about Barry’s mother over coffee (and his accidental slip of _ supermom_) Diana seems to make a more concerted (though subtle) effort to check in with Barry. She asks how he's doing; she gives him encouraging smiles. One day, she even shows up with his favorite sugary latte “just because”. She even scolds him for not getting enough sleep a couple of times. It's honestly the best. 

So Barry, wanting desperately to impress her, throws himself into research. He hears Bruce make a snide comment about a picture, so he even takes a jaunt to France. (He shows up at her office angling to get a dinner invitation so that he can snoop around her house a little, but as it happens, there's a picture that probably fits the bill in her office. She catches him looking at it, and says “That was taken the day before he died, in Veld.” Barry pulls out his phone as a response and shows her a picture of him and Nora. Conveniently, it also allows him to snap a picture of the photo when she isn't looking.) 

So now he has a name, a place, and a photo.

He reverse searches the photo, and gets a grainy newspaper record in an exposé about the photographer, who only by coincidence survived a horrible poison attack on Veld. With a little more digging he finds the date he needs: 10 November 1918, since the photo was taken on the ninth. It takes him several weeks of archive and facial recognition searching to finally get a hit on any of the faces in the photo (Charles something or other), and three more days to hit a “Steve”: it's Steven Rockwell Trevor. His records are sealed, but Barry has enough tech experience to get them open after some effort, and he manages to confirm the death time, and finds the cause: airplane explosion, a sacrifice to diffuse poison gas and save the lives of thousands. Maybe millions. 

(_What a fucking hero,_ he thinks. He can see how he'd be suited for Diana.) 

So now he knows just about everything he needs to in order to get to Steve just before the moment of his death, and the rescue isn't even complicated by having to replace remains, because there never were any left. He runs a few simulations, but can't find any definitive ripple from pulling Steve out of his time and into theirs. Now, he can only hope it works. 

* * *

He puts it off for a bit, until JL business has finished up for the foreseeable future (aka the weekend, if he's lucky) and Diana is back in Paris. 

He calls Diana the next afternoon, from the place he's staying near Veld. 

Surprisingly, she picks up. 

“Barry, is everything alright? Not that I'm not pleased to hear from you, but I just saw you a few days ago.” 

“Yeah, Diana, everything is fine, fine. I'm calling cuz I'm gonna be in Europe tonight and I was hoping I might be able to pop by this evening.”

“You're always welcome, you know that. I'll make dinner. Shall we say 8?” 

He was counting on her supermom concern, and he's not disappointed. 

“That'd be great. See you then.” 

He's incredibly antsy, and he still has a few hours before his mission. He checks and rechecks all of his information, nervous that something will go wrong. 

Finally, it's time. He's due at Diana’s shortly, and it's now or never. 

In the quiet space of an abandoned field, he gears himself up and then takes off. A minute later, he's throwing himself into the Speed Force, concentrating hard on where he needs to end up. 

A moment (or perhaps an eternity) later, the Speed Force has opened up and he is dumped onto a battlefield, just in time to see a plane take off. He’s misjudged just a bit. _ That's okay. He's still got enough energy. He can try again. _

Barry pauses, however, at the sight of Diana going up against the God of War. So long as he's here, he thinks, he may as well watch her kick some godly butt. 

The thing is, she doesn't, not right away. Barry is horrified at what Ares says, at the way that this Diana cannot seem to stop him the way she so easily deals with foe in his time. He has to practice his breathing exercises when Ares wraps her in tank treads, hold himself back from running in to help her because that would _ definitely _change the timeline. And then—

And then. 

He sees her attention directed to the sky, sees the plane carrying Steve, and finally, sees it explode, lighting up the sky like an ill-placed firework. None of this compares to the gut-wrenching scream of anguish that Diana lets out, and Barry is frozen in place by that sound, because he has never heard anything like it in his life—not even when he went back and saw himself after his mother's death—and suspects that he never will again. 

It tears at his heart and claws at his insides, and he watches in awe as Diana proceeds to vanquish Ares in a fiery maelstrom of pain and determination. 

Barry cannot bear to stay for the aftermath, and so he takes off again, this time with even more conviction, determined to get it right. A split second later, the Speed Force reopens, and he is hurled into a plane just as a very attractive blond man takes out a German pilot. 

“Who the hell are you, and how the hell did you get here?” the man (presumably Steve) huffs out. 

“I'm a friend of Diana’s,” is what Barry chooses in reply, exhausted from the second trip and struggling to keep the portal open behind him. 

Steve’s face turns soft before twisting in confusion, probably because he hasn't met this man before. 

“Look,” Barry continues quickly. “I can help. But I have to know: do you love her?” 

“More than anything,” Steve says, without hesitation. 

“And what would you be willing to do to see her again?” 

“Anything,” Steve breathes. “But you have to get out of my way. Neither of us are gonna make it anywhere. I have to disperse this gas. I have to do this, for her.”

“I know,” says Barry. “And I need you to trust me.” 

* * *

Barry stumbles out of the Speed Force for the third time that night in front of Diana’s apartment with an unconscious Steve Trevor at eleven minutes past eight. (Time works funnily in the Speed Force; the return had seemed infinitely shorter, and yet he's still timed it wrong, because technically he's late.) 

He must make enough of a racket just getting Steve up the steps to her door, because she calls out to him. 

“Barry, is that you? The door's open! You know, for someone who is the fastest man alive, you do not seem to—”

Her sentence is cut off as she swings around from the stove to greet him, maybe give him a hug hello, and she sees what he's holding in his arms. 

“What—”

As if by magnetism, or magic (or _ true love, _ whispers the still-not-cynical corner of his brain), Steve chooses this exact moment to come to.

He blinks. (It seems an eternity to Barry, like the world has slowed down, although to be fair, it always technically feels like that when he's capable of practically moving between nanoseconds and thoughts.)

“Angel?” he says, before Diana—eyes wide and expression well and truly shocked—can finish whatever her thought was. 

“_Steve?_” It is cautious, hopeful, unbelieving, reverent, a prayer and an answer, a greeting and an _ I love you, _all rolled into one. 

Barry kind of thinks he shouldn't be here anymore, but he's still kind of supporting Steve. (To be fair, the Speed Force is not an easy trip. The dude's doing pretty well, actually.) 

“Surprise?” says Barry. If he's being honest with himself, he wasn't sure his plan would work, so he never planned this far ahead. 

“I...I don't understand,” Diana says. She adds something else, too, but it's in a language that Barry definitely doesn't understand. 

Barry manages to maneuver Steve onto the couch and tries to explain succinctly. “It's the, uh, Speed Force. I went back and got him. Made sure he shot the bullet that exploded the gas. Pulled him out of his time as the plane exploded. Brought him back to you. I wanted you to be happy. And, uh, I'm just gonna go now.” 

He's gone in a flash (pun absolutely intended), closing the door behind him and back to his hotel room in the span of ten seconds. He's exhausted, but he has his phone on full volume. If she needs to reach him, she'll be able. 

* * *

As it turns out, it's a slow week for the JL, for once in a damn while. Barry does not hear from Diana, and is lowkey operating under the assumption that he doesn't need to be involved in cleaning up a mess, if there is one.

So he lays low, and goes to his real person day job, and sees his real person day friends, does normal things, and tries not to worry that maybe he's actually made Diana’s life worse. He was so focused on the _ goal _ that he really didn't give the consequences much thought. 

Like the fact that he brought a man a hundred years out of his time and subjected him to modern technology. 

Or the fact that maybe Diana loved a memory, and can't love the actual person anymore. 

Just lowkey stuff like that. 

* * *

By the second week, he's freaking the _ fuck _ out, and calls Diana. She doesn't answer. He's contemplating whether or not to take a nice little run across the Atlantic back to Europe to check when there's a knock at his door. 

“Coming!” he calls absently, because he's still trying to decide if it's worth the calories and energy and possibly even her ire. 

It shouldn't be a shock when he opens the door and it's Diana. (But, like, it still is.) 

“Do you mind if I come in?” 

Her face is unreadable as he opens the door wider so she can pass through, and he gulps a little—_he definitely made supermom mad and he's definitely about to get a lecture—_before the mask on her face drops, and it lights up in an incandescent smile. 

And the little voice in the back of his head cheers and his stomach flips because _ there, right there; that's what he was looking for_. _ Even if she yells at him for the rest of eternity, that singular smile was totally worth it. _

“I don't know how to thank you, Barry. How did you even know?” 

He hand flies up to rub the back of his neck sheepishly. “A little research.” She raises an eyebrow. “Okay, uh, a lot of research. I pieced together things you said, and things Bruce said, and some facial recognition and kinda just went for it. Should've asked you, but I didn't wanna get your hopes up in case it didn't work.”

Instead of saying anything else, she just steps forward and folds Barry into a really tight, really great hug. 

“Not having more time was one of my greatest personal regrets, and you brought me that, Barry. Thank you.” 

“I'm just glad it worked out,” Barry says in response. “And that you're not mad at me, cuz man oh man, I definitely thought you would be.” 

She laughs, and he feels pleased with himself again. 

“I've decided not to question the universe on this one. It's so nice to be happy.” 

“Yeah,” says Barry, thinking of Iris. “It is.”

“Steve and I will have you over for a proper dinner soon,” Diana says, as she prepares to go. “To make up for the one that was...canceled.” 

“Thanks, Di. I look forward to meeting Steve for real.”

“Me too.” She grins. “Let me know when you'd like to be in Europe, and we'll set something up. I really don't know how to thank you.”

She's about to take her leave, when he calls out to her.

“Can I ask a favor?”

“Of course.”

“Can you make sure I'm there when you tell Bruce?”

* * *

She doesn't just tell Bruce, she _ brings Steve in_. The look on Bruce’s face is _ so _ worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> comments/kudos always appreciated, especially since this is my first posted work :)


End file.
